Does morality require a religious point of view?

This post explores the premise, stated by Bradley[i], that religion is necessary for morality to have any force.  The choice is essentially one between moral absolutism and moral relativism and I investigate the benefits and dis-benefits of both systems. For a morality dependent upon a religious point of view it will be necessary for society to hold a belief and I will look at some obstacles and remedies to achieving this. In terms of moral absolutism, the question of whether God is the good or the good transcends God, will not to be addressed.  I will concentrate on the authority with which a moral system functions.

I will take the phrase ‘religious point of view’ to imply a belief in a higher authority, or God.

Moral absolutism holds that moral values are universal and apply to all individuals and cultures.  It is proposed, following Bradley, that a morality enforced by a higher level authority, one that would come with a religious point of view, would be far more effective than the authority of a relativist moral system. 

Relativist moral systems develop as part of the prevailing cultural framework within which they exist.  Sometimes with permissive results leading to practices that would be considered abuses or taboo in absolute terms.  As culture changes, between different communities or at a macro level, for example between the modern and post-modernism eras, so a relativist moral system will change.  There will be no consistency over time or between contemporary communities.  “If [relativism is] taken seriously and pressed to its logical conclusion, ethical relativity can only end in destroying morality altogether”.[ii] 

Conversely, the authority of an enduring God would provide constancy and solidity.  “If there is cosmic purpose, if there is in the nature of things a drive towards goodness, then our moral systems will derive their validity from this”.[iii]

Fein[iv] notes that hierarchies are a natural phenomenon present in all human societies, and Brandt and Reyna[v] note that God is at the head of a human hierarchy.  In other words, God is the higher authority within these hierarchies.

The efficacy of a higher authority to provide the necessary motivation to change or govern behaviour has been recognised in the secular world.  For example, ‘Higher Power’ is the term used by Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)[vi], and is also used in other twelve-step recovery programmes, to provide the power to achieve change within an individual that cannot be achieved by themselves.

A consideration that then plays into this discussion is whether to have an effective higher level authority it has to be ‘believed that’ such an authority exists (an intellectual commitment), rather than the moral system directed by the higher authority simply being ‘believed in’ (a moral or existential commitment).

Bradley goes on to outline some of the obstacles to belief, referring to the resistance to ideas of God and personal God, immortality and the conflict between revelation and science[vii].  Noting that these present obstacles, he goes on to say, “we say nothing about the ultimate truth of religion”[viii], but notes that “religion is a doing and a doing which is moral”.[ix]  There is a suggestion here, as in the approach of Alcoholics Anonymous, that belief in the ultimate truth of religion, ‘belief that’, is not necessary, but that belief in some form of higher authority is.

The three theistic groups hold that God “is by definition omnipotent; omniscient and eternal”[x].  The origins of these and other properties lie in the ideas of classical philosophy and the later theology of, for example, Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas.  It helps that this being would be almighty (omnipotent, omniscient and other properties) for the imperative to follow moral principles to have some force.  (In the case of Christianity, it is also helpful that the doctrine of the Cross provides the opportunity to start again when failures to act morally occur).

However, although there are references within the Old Testament to the greatness of God, (Psalms, Isaiah, etc), it could be argued that these properties are described from the relative human perspective.  It isn’t clearly established that God must have these ultimate properties to be God. The alternative being that to be God, God only has to be relatively all-powerful.  The Greek Gods were seen as both fallible and of varying power, for example.

To state that God must be omnipotent as a starting point becomes a problem, when the existence of evil demonstrates, arguably, that that property isn't being experienced in the physical world.  The many wrongs of religion also present obstacles to belief, e.g. David Hume, “The greatest crimes have been found in many instances to be compatible with a superstitious piety and devotion”.[xi]

Can such a god be believed in and can a post-modern society, steeped in the progress of science and cosmology, then also believe in an omnipotent being?  Perhaps the arguments for God’s existence may be more successful if God is not seen as all powerful.

How is belief to be achieved?  Churches are weak in the post-modern West and evangelism is not effective, or even acceptable to many.

New strands of theology may provide an answer.  The emerging church movement prefers to engage in dialogue, rather than proclaiming a pre-digested message[xii].  Some proponents of Process Theology, which covers a wide field of thought, hold that the traditional concept of God as omnipotent is a barrier to belief as it fails to make sense[xiii].

Perhaps these developments could provide a route to belief in a higher authority in the post-modern western context.  Arnaud, Kanyeredzi and Lawrence suggest that, “as a lot of people in the UK have issues with religion, Alcoholics Anonymous’ concept of a higher Power could give its members the opportunity to accept spirituality free from religious dogma”[xiv].

In essence, moral relativism provides a weak system, subject to cultural and societal change, for better or worse.  The benefits of belief in a higher authority to provide force to an absolute morality can work, but religion is also subject to abuse. 

The challenge then is then how a belief in a higher authority is brought about, and new areas of theology and alternative approaches may be more effective with post-modern audiences.

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[i] Bradley, F. H. (1876) Ethical Studies, p.280.

[ii] Stace, W.  URL= https://sites.google.com/site/sirhcsemaj1/philosophy/w-t-stace-on-ethical-absolutism-and-relativism

[iii] Stace, W. The Meaning of Life, p 88.

[iv] Fein, M. (2012) Human Hierarchies: A General Theory, p.29

[v] Brandt, M. J. Reyna, C. (Sept 2011), The Chain of Being: A Hierarchy of Morality, Perspectives on Psychological Science, p.428

[vi] Alcoholics Anonymous. (2001) The Story of How Many Thousands of Men and Women Have Recovered from Alcoholism, p. 59

[vii] Bradley, p.280

[viii] Ibid

[ix] Ibid, p.281

[x] Mawson, T. J. (2005) Belief in God, p.51.

[xi] Hume, D. (1757) The Natural History of Religion, p. 27. URL = https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/hume1757_1.pdf

[xii] Perry, S. (2003). What is So Holy About Scripture

[xiii] Griffin, D. R. (2004) God, Power, and Evil: A Process Theodicy, p.268

[xiv] Arnaud, Y. Kanyeredzi, A. Lawrence, J (2015) AA Members Understandings of the HP – A Qualitative Study, Journal of Addiction Research and Therapy.

Palm Sunday and the man

I’ve been able to get to a couple of Lent meetings this year.  They’ve been run using the first of the C of E’s ‘pilgrim’ course (‘What do Christians believe’), which is very good. (www.pilgrimcourse.org) 

During session 3, which looks in more detail at who Christians believe Jesus is, it occurred to me the although Jesus is both God and man, divine and human, the focus of Christians today tends to be on the divinity of Christ, and his humanity is often side-lined.  For me although both aspects of his nature are equally important I have more recently been finding his humanness an area of real revelation.

As an example we have in (Mark 11:11-26 and Matt. 21:10-22) the incident of Jesus cursing the fig tree.  Jesus is hungry and seeing a fig tree he looks for fruit and seeing none he curses the tree saying “May you never bear fruit again!”  Later the disciples pass the same way and notice that the fig tree has withered (Mark 11:20, 21).  Many read some divine purpose and forethought in Jesus action – an intentional demonstration of his power.  For me it is a straightforward record of a hungry man cursing when he doesn’t find hoped for food, demonstrating a very human frustration.  That the tree then withers also demonstrates his divinity.

This event comes after triumphal entry into Jerusalem when he receives the adulation of the crowd while riding on a donkey.  Again this is usually seen as an unexpected, unplanned, and therefore divinely arranged event by many following the story today.  But Jesus was a deeply well-read scholar of the scriptures.  He knew that Zechariah 9:9 prophesied “See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey…”  And, knowing his destiny from this scripture he, as a man, will surely have arranged beforehand for the provision of the donkey, the owner anticipating that men would subsequently come to borrow the donkey saying, when challenged, “The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.” (Mark 11:3).

Something that seems to be missed in a fundamental way is that Jesus was a man of deep faith.  He believed in the destiny that God had set before him, he set out in faith to comply with the prophesies about the Messiah, and was obedient to this role right up to his death. “…being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:8).

Russell Brand - Is There a God? YES!

I don't really like listening to Russell Brand, but without a doubt he is very influential, especially with young people. This piece however is intelligent, well articulated, and insightful. Well worth a look:

Atonement

As promised – my own thoughts on the meaning of the cross.  

I've felt obliged to start with a summary of orthodox understanding in order to set the scene for my own thoughts later on. Please do read to the end and don't be put off by 'yet another christian banging on about the cross' at the beginning.

The clear evangelical position on the meaning of the crucifixion and resurrection is termed Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA).  In a nutshell this means that Christ paid the penalty for the sins of the whole world when he willingly surrendered to execution by the Romans, thereby becoming a sacrifice to cover all of our sins, now and in the future. This is the clear teaching of the whole of scripture: 

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.  We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53 v5, 6)

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,(1 Corinthians 15 v3,4)

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5 v8)

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10 v45)

  are examples of many passages that lead to this doctrine.  

In the Old Testament sins were redeemed through animal sacrifice (Leviticus Ch14 and Ch15).  So to be able to pay the price for the sins of the whole world this sacrifice had to be significant indeed.  In fact only the sacrifice of God himself on our behalf could possibly do it, and so the fact of the resurrection becomes vital in the story. For the resurrection demonstrates that Jesus was truly God: And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins (1 Corinthians 15 v17).

These facts are central to Christian belief. The physical death and bodily resurrection are vital truths without which Christianity has no foundation.  

But now we come to the objection of many (notably in recent times Steve Chalke: Atonement debate) that God must be some kind of monster to demand such sacrifice for the forgiveness of sin.  If he is God why cannot he just forgive?  After all, that’s what we do.  

This now leads us to the observation that clearly in the Old Testament, God is not a fan of sacrifice: “The multitude of your sacrifices— what are they to me?” says the Lord. “I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats”(Isaiah 1 v11), and

“You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.  My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise”(Psalm 51 v16,17) 

and in the New Testament: 

“But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matt 9 v13). 

So why sacrifice, requiring the death of something?  Girard’s Mimetic Theory provides a solution. It proposes that in the earliest human communities the practice of sacrifice was developed as a solution to bad seasons and crop failures, and other unexplained difficulties for early human groups.  (For a clear explanation about how this anthropological theory works see “Compassion Or Apocalypse?: A comprehensible guide to the thought of Rene Girard” by James Warren (www.amazon.co.uk)).  

But in essence, sacrifice involving the death of something can be seen as a human device, not a divine one.  An effort by early human society to pacify the gods, which then developed with the passage of time into a requirement for a sacrificial price through the death of something to cover the penalty for sins.  Animals were sacrificed as a substitute for the human who needed redemption.  

So now in Jesus we have a saviour who has paid the sacrificial price for every level of sin that we are likely to commit: Have we done something that should require our arrest – he’s done that, something that would lead to our friends deserting us? Something that would make someone spit at us? beat us?, flog us?, and ultimately, something that would require our execution? He’s been through that.

But God does not require such a sacrifice, we do, and God sent Christ to the cross not to satisfy his need for a sacrifice, but to satisfy ours.  God could just forgive us, without any need for sacrifice, it is we who require sacrifice in order to be convinced that the required price has been paid.  

Which makes his sacrifice on our behalf, not to appease God but to satisfy us (“Why? What crime has he committed?” asked Pilate. But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!” (Matt 27 v23)), all the more remarkable.

What is the New Heaven and the New Earth?

I have been influenced quite a bit by writers like NT Wright and Brian McLaren on this subject, but have developed my own understanding, I think, beyond the points that they reach.

It seems to me that God seems always to act, when he does act, using the natural processes (the laws of physics if you like) that he has set in place. So, for example, it has recently been proposed that the crossing of the Red Sea by Moses and the Israelites was achieved by the way that winds in the area blow in a certain way across the area between Egypt and Israel. I saw a programme a while ago in which the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen suggested that it could have been a tsunami caused by an earthquake on the other side of the Mediterranean that caused a complete withdrawal of the sea (during which the Israelites crossed) followed by the tidal wave, which killed the chasing Egyptians.

It was the timing of the event, happening just at the right moment, rather than the event itself, which demonstrated the miraculous. This starts me on a path of thought that suggests that a completely new earth, as believed by many from reading Revelation 21, is not the way to understand this passage: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God….” (Rev 21 v 1,2a, NIV). We are taught that Revelation is composed of fantastic imagery and is to be understood with reference to symbols that would have been understood at the time that it was written (e.g. references to the woman and the dragon, the four living creatures, etc). These descriptions are not to be taken literally but are symbols given to provide understanding of the bigger message. Why then should we understand the picture of a new heaven and new earth (ie completely new things, not containing any of the old) so literally? 

My own view is that the Bible, indeed the whole of Gods plan, is leading us forward to a time when all things are put right. That this will be, in effect, a future time when humanity, under the guidance of God and living increasingly in the way he has set out, reaches a point where ‘justice roll[s] on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream’. (Amos 5 v24, TNIV) and where the imperative on all is to ‘act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God’. (Micah 6, v8). The “world as it should be” as said by Hillary Clinton when campaigning in the last American election. So this new heaven and new earth would be this world at a point when all things are put right. This view means that there will not have to be a suspension of the natural processes to create a new thing, rather it will be a point in the future to which humanity is travelling. This future world will be marked with the signs of the ‘Kingdom of God’: justice, mercy, righteousness (when people governments, etc, do the right thing, do right by all).

And we see signs of this all the time (of the world coming together, of demonstrations of justice, mercy, and righteousness). See for example the way that the world now reacts to natural disasters (the Asian tsunami, the Haiti earthquake). Countries around the world, including Russia and China, rushed to send help to these areas. How about the end of apartheid and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission under Bishop Desmond Tutu? All signs, I believe, of the Kingdom coming closer. 

So this is what we work for. This gives us real impetus. Not ‘pie in the sky when you die’, but a very real world, this world, made better as more and more people work for it and seek it, until it comes about. This is my reading of the message of the Bible; this is what Jesus, already standing there at that point when this new heaven and new earth are in place, calls us to.